Sarah Paulsen
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  • Current Projects: On Whiteness
    • The Invention of Whiteness >
      • White by Law
      • Passenger
      • Consumer's Void
      • The Racial Matrix
      • Jello
    • On Whiteness >
      • hidden white norms
      • Family Culture, Traditions, and Rituals
  • Visual Art
    • Animation Drawings, Props, and Ephemera
    • Painting >
      • Untitled Women
      • Parades >
        • History of Parades
      • Female Flaneur >
        • Female Flaneur Exploration in St. Louis
        • Thrift Store Identities
        • Searching for Art in South America
        • The Grand Tour
      • Portraits of Columbia
      • Group Portraits
    • CamRah >
      • Ant Circus and Built
      • Echo
      • Off the Wall in Utter Pandemonium as We Tape on It.
      • Temple of the Dancing Bear
      • Murals and Set Design
    • Collage/Assemblage >
      • Targets
      • Wanderlust
    • Community Projects >
      • Community Workshops & Artist Residencies
      • Curating
      • Murals
      • People's Joy Parade
    • Drawing >
      • Recall Redraw Release
      • Things for Which I am Nostalgic
      • Sketches and Process Work
    • Installation >
      • & Animation
      • & Paintings
      • Female Flaneur Exploration
      • Found Fabric Screen
    • Costumes and Performances
  • Video and Animation
    • Ant Circus
    • Begin
    • Elegy to Connie >
      • Elegy to Connie artworks
    • High Wire
    • Heart is a Muscle
    • Midwest Hair
    • ¿Qué Séra, Séra?
    • W.O.W (Women On Wheels)
  • Teaching
    • Marian Middle School and College/Adult Classes
    • Animation Workshops and Classes
  • Sales
    • Freelance & commission work.

Passenger, cuts between two stories set in 1914; the “Pageant of the Melting Pot” ritual held at the Ford factory English assimilation school for Immigrants and the extinction of the last passenger pigeon, Martha.  The passenger pigeon was a communal bird that traveled in enormous flocks that turned the sky black, in an almost mystical occurrence. Thought to be an endless resource, the birds went extinct due to the invention of the telephone and its impact on hunter’s ability to track the flocks.

This animation looks at how capitalist industry, ignorance, and opportunity were driving forces for: assimilation of new immigrants into assuming a white racial identity and the extinction of the passenger pigeon.

There are a variety of animation techniques in this including; animated bird seed; cut paper animation using early 1900 advertisements as cutouts; watercolor, oil, and acrylic paintings; puppets; and animated drawing.
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